Magic Without Mercy (16 page)

“Why us?” Shame asked.

“Because you are efficient with Death magic, and your mother is efficient with Blood magic. I believe both of those specific disciplines are needed to help Davy recover.”

Which meant Collins was also efficient with those disciplines.

Maeve stood up. “Then let’s get this done, gentlemen,” she said. “Quickly, now.”

Collins walked off to the bedroom where Davy was sleeping. Maeve, Shame, and Hayden followed.

“You might want to see that too,” Zayvion said to Victor.

Victor raised his eyebrows, then nodded. He started after them.

“Victor?” Zay asked before he’d gone too far. “Do you think you can do it?”

“Unclose Eli?” he asked.

Zay nodded.

One corner of Victor’s mouth quirked up. “We’ll find out, won’t we?” He turned and left.

“What was that all about?” I asked.

Zayvion was still looking after Victor. “Victor has been recently Closed and Unclosed himself,” he said. “One of the things I took away from him was his ability to Close. And to Unclose.”

“But you gave it back, right? When you Unclosed him?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a chance he’ll totally screw this up, isn’t there?”

Zayvion glanced down at the floor, then back up at me. “There’s always that chance. If Victor thinks he can do it, he will.” At my look, he added, “He was my teacher, Allie. He was the best Closer I’ve ever known. Still is.”

I nodded. I hoped he was right. For all our sakes.

M
aeve looked a little pale and flushed when she came out of the room that held Davy. But she took my hands and assured me she could help him if things went wrong with Collins.

I didn’t believe her, but I hugged her and thanked her anyway.

Hayden just looked disgusted by it all and stomped off to lean against a wall so he could glower at Collins.

Victor looked thoughtful. And when he glanced at me, his eyes wandered from the whorls of magic that caught at the edge of my right eye and then flowered down along my jaw and throat, down my arm to my fingertips.

Collins had said my marks were what gave him the idea to work magic literally
in
Davy’s skin. It might have saved his life. It might have sentenced him to a slow death. But it looked like Victor found that idea fascinating too.

Which was fine and all, but we had work to do.

“So now, Victor,” Collins said. “The sooner you fulfill your part of the bargain, the sooner we can put the samples to the test.”

Victor nodded. “I understand that. Where are the other samples, Allie?”

“Maeve has one from the Blood well. Stone is carrying a sample of magic from the Life well.”

“Really?” he said. “Stone? Who managed that?”

“Me,” Shame said. “And I’d rather not have to do it again. That spell won’t last forever.”

“How long?” I asked.

“I don’t know what being inside an Animate will do to it,” Shame said, “but I’d say we have about eight hours left before it fades.”

“And by ‘fades,’ you mean the spell breaks and we lose our sample?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I turned to Maeve. “How long does your sample have?”

“Maybe sixteen hours.”

“You used the flask, didn’t you?” Shame asked.

She nodded.

“Show-off,” he said.

“Then we need to get Stone,” I said. “I’ll take care of that while you Unclose Collins. Maeve, will you keep an eye on Davy for me?”

“Of course,” she said. And the way she said it, I knew she also planned on keeping an eye on Victor and Collins too.

“Hayden—,” I started.

“I’m staying here.”

“That’s what I’d hoped you’d do. Shame, you’re going.”

“Damn right I am.”

I walked toward the other room, toward the outside door. He followed like I knew he would.

“You’re not going with us,” I said.

“Where else would I be going? Think I’ll leave you and Zay out there summoning a gargoyle on your own? And why can’t you just do that here, anyway?”

“I do not want to summon Stone to the warehouse
because if he is being followed, I don’t know that he’d be smart enough to know it.”

“Who would follow Stone?” Shame asked. “Hell, who even knows he exists?”

“Nola. Cody. Detective Stotts,” I said.

“Ah.” Shame nodded. “Didn’t think of that. Must be the lack of fun numbing my brain. So, you going to summon him, magic girl?”

“No. Zay is. And you”—I zipped up my coat and pushed my glasses back on my face—“are going to try to get a sample from the Death well. If, for any reason, it looks dangerous, I want you to back out. Repeat what I just said.”

“Allie doesn’t think you can handle yourself, Shamus,” he mimicked in a high voice. “Not only that, she thinks you’d walk stupidly to your death.”

“Would you?” I asked.

“Not stupidly.” He gave me a grin. “I’m not one of your puppies. You don’t have to worry about me. And by the way, when I walk to my death? You will fall on your knees in awe.”

“We don’t have time for awe,” I said. “We have time for careful, quick, and come back here immediately.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem.”

We stepped out into the garage area. I heard the door behind me lock, and a bolt slide into place. Good.

“Later, lovelies,” Shame said. He got into Maeve’s car and rolled out of the garage.

“Zay,” I said. “Can you tell Terric he needs to go to the Death well and help Shame?”

“I can tell him to go to the well. I think it’d be better not to mention Shame.” He adjusted his cuff and tapped at the bracelet.

“Ready for this?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. “It’s just one little gargoyle. How hard can it be to find him?”

An hour later, sitting as close to my apartment as we dared to park, with Zayvion casting a third Summon spell, I had decided it was damn near impossible to find one little gargoyle if he didn’t want to be found.

“Nothing?” I asked Zay, who had cast a short tracer on the Summon to see if he could at least track down which side of town Stone might be clambering around in.

He shook his head. “I think I need to throw a Tracking spell.”

“Tracking spells are too easy to follow back to the caster,” I said.

“And?”

“And it’s too dangerous. You cast that and any Hound in the city working with the cops or the Authority will see your signature and point to you from half a city away.”

“Three Summon spells will do the same,” he said.

“No. Summon has a way of screwing up its trajectory. They’re notoriously difficult to follow back if you aren’t the person who’s being summoned.” I rubbed at my hair, tucking it behind my ears even though there was nothing really to tuck anymore. I felt twitchy, trapped.

It didn’t help that I could see the Veiled walking the streets, more of them—a lot more—than real, living people. The Veiled were searching for magic to eat, stopping at permanent spells to open their wide, black-hole mouths and drink down the magic until the spell broke. And then moving on to another spell.

Zayvion had been very careful to cast only when I’d told him I didn’t see any Veiled in our vicinity. But we were running out of time.

For all I knew, Roman had made it to the Overseer, and she’d decided we were the dangerous ones. She
might be sending forces to Portland right now to make sure we were taken in, or taken out.

Shame said there were only eight hours left on the spell Stone held. And I had no idea how long it would take to actually test the purity of the magic.

It was getting dark, which was probably good as far as cover went. Every time a cop car cruised by, it took everything I had not to hide my face.

“Sorry, babe,” Zay said. “It’s time to track Stone. At least to which quarter of Portland he’s in. Or if he’s not.”

“Wait, what? You think he’s not in town? Of course he’s here.”

“It wasn’t just Detective Stotts. People in the Authority knew about Stone too,” Zay said. “They could have taken him.”

Hells. He was right.

“Something light and fast,” I said. “What Tracking spell do you do best?”

“All of them,” he said, and I knew he was not bragging. “Ping is the most subtle.”

I liked Ping. It was a little unreliable, but usually got the job done. And it was almost traceless. “Okay,” I said.

“Tell me when it’s clear.” Zay drew the multilegged glyph for Ping, and it spun there in his hand, not yet holding magic, looking like a ball of twine with twelve legs wriggling off it, giving it a cartoonish, excited, wavy look.

A Veiled walked in front of the car, and I shivered a little. It was weird to know I could see them plain as daylight, but Zayvion wouldn’t be able to see a Veiled unless he drew a Sight spell. And if he drew a spell, the Veiled would be all over him to get at the magic.

“Hold on—Veiled man walking down the street. He just turned the corner,” I said. “Okay, you can cast it.”

I loved to watch Zayvion cast magic, but right now I
loved even more that he could do it quickly and with minimal draw on the networks. He knew exactly how much magic it would take to power a spell, and didn’t waste any time doing it.

Magic filled the Ping and Zay threw it out through the car window. The spell rose, then hit a building, paused, and pinged off to another building, leaving very little trace behind.

“Impressive,” I said.

“Be more impressed if it finds Stone.” Zayvion started the car and we followed the spell.

“How long will it last?” I asked.

“Fifteen minutes, tops,” Zay said.

Which was smart. Short spells were harder for Hounds to track. Hopefully this spell was short enough to disappear before anyone got a read on us, but long enough to point out where Stone might be.

“Think it would be easier to just go back to the Life well and get a new sample?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “But if this doesn’t work, we might have to.”

Walking back to a crime scene where we’d left five men dead was not my idea of a fun way to spend the evening. Of course, neither was hunting a gargoyle.

Zayvion glanced down at his wrist.

“Pooh-gram?” I asked.

“Yes. Do you still have the book?”

I dug in my back pocket. “I thought you had the entire thing memorized.”

“I do. I’m just a little busy.”

Oh. Right. Driving a car, following a spell, and reading secret codes. “What’s the numbers?”

“Three, one, sixteen. Three, one, twenty-one. Shit.” Zay slammed on the brakes and the car skidded out into
the intersection on a red light, traffic coming at us. He put it in reverse, and glanced up at the buildings around us. “Do you see it?”

I bent so I could get a better look. “It’s headed west.”

“Got it,” he said. He glanced at his wrist. “Forty, three, twenty-two, twenty-three.”

“Is that all of it?”

“Most. I think I missed a sequence.”

I pulled the book out of my pocket and thumbed through it. “Head. Is. Hostile. Intent,” I said. “Does that make any sense to you?”

“Must be from Terric,” Zay said. “Head of the Authority is hostile intent toward us, probably.”

“That’s news?” I asked.

“He knows who the head of the Authority is. That’s news.”

“There,” I said, pointing. “I think Ping found him.”

The spell settled on the side of a building, then sank into the ground, spent. But it hadn’t just faded away to ashes. Good. That meant it stopped because it found something, not because it ran out of energy.

“Do you know this place?” I asked.

Zay circled the block. “No. Offices of some kind?”

“I don’t think so. Didn’t it used to be an electrical store? Housewares or something?”

“Antique shop,” Zay said.

“That’s right.”

He parked the car up the block. Didn’t turn off the engine yet.

“You don’t think Stone’s alone in there, do you?” I asked.

“Do you?”

I shook my head. “It’s not like him to not answer a call, or not to be somewhere around my apartment. He
made it all the way to Multnomah Falls when Shame called him. There’s no reason he shouldn’t answer your Summon in a few minutes, max.”

“Which means he’s trapped,” Zay said.

I nodded. “I have no idea what can trap him.”

“We’ll find out.” Zayvion didn’t pull his weapons. Neither did I. Didn’t mean we left them behind either.

We got out of the car and strode down the street. I suppose we could have taken the back alleys and tried to find a back entrance. But it was dark. There were no streetlights shining on the building, and very little traffic. Whoever had picked this place wanted it to be out of the way, but not too out of the way.

I wondered how they’d lured Stone in. I wondered what they did to him.

“Anything on the door?” Zay asked as we approached.

“No magic,” I said.

“Good.” Zayvion rolled his fingers, making it seem incredibly easy to pull a glyph together without looking, then held whatever he’d just drawn in his fist, ready to use it, but without pouring magic in it yet.

He pushed the door. It was unlocked.

I was right on his heels.

The empty room was dark, but light spilled out across the floor from an open door on the other side of the room. The sound of a TV playing quietly reached me, along with the scent of hot rocks—that would be Stone—and a familiar, orange-heavy cologne.

Footsteps from the other room approached us. But only one set. A man. And then that man stood in the doorway, blocking the light. He did not look happy.

“Allie, Zayvion,” Detective Paul Stotts said. “Drop the magic, unload your weapons on the other side of the door, and you can come in.”

“Do you have Stone?” I asked.

“Yes.” He turned and walked back into the other room.

I looked at Zay. “Why don’t you stay out here? In case.” It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Paul. Okay, that was a lie. I mostly trusted him, but he was a police officer, and I was currently up on embezzlement charges, and if anyone had found Bartholomew’s smoking corpse, I was also up on murder.

I’d tried to tell him before about the Authority, about dark and light magic, the Veiled, and everything else, but he’d wanted proof. And that was the one thing I was short on.